


I'm On Fire

by somekindofgnome (IAmAverage)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Five Years Later, Rating May Change, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-04 22:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14030526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmAverage/pseuds/somekindofgnome
Summary: "Only you can cool my desire."Five years after the end of the war, Katara and Zuko are busily wrapped up in their lives without one another. But try as they might, neither of them can manage to keep the other away from their thoughts. When Zuko turns to his friends for help after a dispute with his father's old council, a debt unpaid brings fire and ice together again.





	I'm On Fire

_Vibrant capillaries of blue lightning exploded before her vision. Katara was blinded but fascinated, unable to look away. She waited instead for pain, white-hot, from head to toe._  

_Nothing came._

_Nothing ever came._

Katara's eyes flew open. Her body broke out in sweat. For a moment, she lay there, panting in the pressing dark before she remembered where she was. She sat up and her forehead brushed the dew-slicked canvas of the tent in which she slept.

Aang rested beside her, peaceful as ever, arms outstretched toward Katara even in sleep.

Katara needed air.

The moon lit up the silvery sea-grass where their tent lay, lush and supple and rippling like the ocean itself. Katara's life force. She looked to the horizon, clear, serene, and saw lightning reflected in her mind.

Gran-Gran always spoke of omens. She saw them in weather, people, in the flickering flames of the hearth. Sometimes dreams, she used to say, could be messages from the spirits, wiser than we could ever hope to be.

The fist time Katara dreamed of that day, a storm kept her tossing and turning through most of the night. She'd assumed that the clash of thunder and the crash of lightning brought traumatic memories to the surface. Only that dream never let go. She had been all over the world since that night and Azula's crazed smile, Zuko's desperate cry had followed her.

_Zuko._

Katara had walked off this dream many times before. Every time she crawled back into bed dazed by thoughts of Zuko. Questions. It was no secret that things had changed between them before that fateful day. When Zuko helped her find closure for her mother, she'd sensed a deep understanding that made what once seemed impossible (trust, forgiveness) easy. But to throw his life and the meaning behind it all away in a moment? That was more than selfless. More than thoughtless. For a brief, heady moment back then, Katara had selfishly expected more.

Then he'd reconciled with Mai. She hadn't been able to bring herself to jealousy. And she'd never tell Aang, but when he'd come to her with open arms, she relented, hoping to let go of whatever pipe dream she'd been holding on to.

If only, she thought with no small amount of chagrin, the pipe dream could let go of her.

The breeze blew stiff through her clothes. Dwelling never helped. And so, dazed as usual, Katara turned away from the sea and sky, amber liquid eyes flowing freely through her mind.

-

"Your grace. Y-your grace!"

Fa Zhou, a trusted advisor and colleague of the royal family, scurried after the angry Firelord. The fearsome leader, infuriated, stormed down the ornate hallway with frustrated plumes of smoke billowing behind him after every exhale.

"Please, Your Grace, I implore you, reconsider-"

"Silence!" Zuko bellowed, hearing Ozai in his voice as he wheeled around to face the mousy advisor. In his adult life Zuko had grown rather broad, a towering creature of fearsome stature, especially when swathed in the rich, dark robes of his people.

"I refuse to collaborate with men who hold my father's beliefs," he defended. "Those are the same men who watched Ozai burn his teenage son and send him away."

"O-of course, Your Grace," squeaked Fa Zhou. Zuko was never one to slay the messenger. But that didn't mean he wasn't frightening in this state. "But… dismissing every member of your Small Counsel at once? Do you not think it…"

"Think it what?" Zuko demanded. "Tyrannical? Something Azula might have done?" His eyes were blazing now, bright and violent and entirely unpredictable.

"Not at all, m-my- erm, y-your grace! Merely that… I do not know how you will replace them with no counsel to advise you."

Zuko settled. His temper was fierce, but quickly assuaged by the sobering weight of reality.

"If I took the council's advice, I would not have dismissed them in the first place," he retorted with a great deal more humor in his voice than before. His hands twitched. Once upon a time, running them through his hair was a nervous habit. Now that he so often wore it pulled back into the traditional Fire Nation topknot, the option was no longer there. And still, he found himself itching to do it more than ever.

"I'm not sure how I'll do it," he sighed. "I don't care, though." His voice grew harsher again, rough and certain. "I cannot work toward a new era of peace with men who hold on to days of war. I will find another counsel myself, no matter how time-consuming the process proves."

Fa Zhou was not a courageous man. But he had worked closely with Iroh and knew Zuko well. He could see the intent in the young Firelord's eyes and knew that Zuko would keep true to his word. On many levels, Zuko had been right in his reluctance to collaborate with Ozai's council from the start.

"Of course, your grace. Shall I-"

"I'm taking a walk," Zuko announced. "When I return, I will settle this matter, Until then, you should concern yourself with seeing the old masters out. I'll imagine there's a great deal of confusion in there right now. But I know what I said. Their ways are dated. The age of war tactics and domination strategies is over."

That evening, five messenger hawks flew into the sunset. To any onlooker, they might have seen a majestic formation of five sleek birds of prey and nothing more. But their flight signified something. The mark of a new era of humanity, soaring into the horizon.

-

Messenger hawks were the fastest way to deliver messages around the world. But the moon had still passed through one half-cycle before Katara returned to her campsite from the marketplace, basket of veggies balanced on one hip (a Water Tribe salesman gave her an excellent deal on sea prunes and dry-cured seal jerky) to find Aang crouching by the firepit with a scroll in his hand.

"What's that?"

It wasn't often they got messages. Being of no fixed address served that well. And since she and Aang had been nomadic for upward of four years now, gathering first-person accounts of the problems arising in post-war society, they were simultaneously thrust deep into the heart of it and entirely isolated.

Aang didn't answer right away. He opened the scroll again, scanned the contents, and passed it silently over to her.

Katara recognized the curt, jagged writing of the Firelord before she even read its contents. It was addressed to both of them. She read it slowly, so much so that Aang was squirming with anticipation by the time her blue eyes rose from the page.

"He wants us to come to the capital," she said. "He dismissed his father's small council. He wants us to come be a part of the new one."

"I think that's more directed at you than me," Aang responded. Katara didn't see why he was so solemn. There was nothing she'd like more than one, finite place to live, even if it was only for a year or so.

"Don't say that. It's addressed to both of us," soothed Katara.

"You think that's what he wants from me? To give up my life as the Avatar to serve on his small council? I can't make that kind of commitment, Katara."

Katara couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Who said anything about giving up your life?" She demanded. "You read what he said. It's temporary. Maybe a year, at most. Come on. This is Zuko we're talking about. He needs our help."

"I need your help!" Aang exploded, though it sounded more like a desperate cry than any angry expression she'd ever heard from him. "There are so many places I haven't been," he continued. "Stories I haven't heard. Everyone has a voice, Katara, and I need to hear them."

"Haven't you done enough?" Katara defended, knowing the words were poison as soon as they filled her mouth. But she kept speaking anyway. "You know more than anybody what needs to be fixed. Doesn't that make you the best possible candidate for this kind of work? He's more than just the Firelord, Aang. He's your friend."

"I know what you're thinking," he insisted, and any lingering serenity in his gaze was gone. His eyes were sheer ice as he spoke. "You think because he isn't with Mai anymore, he's just going to turn around and-"

"You stop right there," she threatened, cutting him off with an icy glare. "You stop talking right now before you say something you really regret. I chose to be with you, Aang. I gave up the comforts of my home and life with my people, my family, to follow you in your pursuits. I don't resent that choice for one second. But if you have insecurities about our relationship all of a sudden, you don't get to take those out in petty, unfounded jealousy. That's not fair to me."

"Katara-" Aang urged, but she stormed very deliberately out of earshot before he could say more. They were camped in a mountain valley, with a narrow, winding path leading up out of the old riverbank. Aang considered following her but knew, after so many years living with Katara, that she would return when she was ready to speak again.

Katara walked back to the village, her mind racing in disbelief. The way through the village was the only path she knew, so she wound her way through the streets, continuing to the mountain and beyond.

It had been five years since the end of the war. In the four since the Yu Dao conflict was settled, she had heard from Zuko only once. It was a short note, letting them know that Azula's mental state had deteriorated entirely. She was institutionalized after the war, but things had never improved.

Now, he needed their help.

Katara knew that Aang was, in part, right. She had never told him of her recurring dream, for fear of the same insecurities he'd expressed anyway. But if he had no real reason for this anxiety, why had she kept so much from him to keep it from his thoughts?

Either way, Katara decided, she had to go. She had been traveling so often for so long. She was exhausted.

Aang saw her picking her way down the valley path as the sun drew low in the sky. Her pace was calm and set, and his chest tightened. He just wanted everything to be okay again.

"Katara, I…" he started as she reached the campsite. Katara did not interrupt him, but sat next to him on a flat rock nearby, staring into the fire he'd built to keep the growing shadows away.

Katara was better at building them. Aang never quite knew which wood was dry enough to burn first, so the flames hissed and sputtered precariously, but flickered nonetheless.

"I thought about what you said," Aang spoke after a long, dizzying silence. "And what I said. Which I shouldn't have."

He paused. Katara was silent and the flames flickered in her gaze.

"I think you're right, though," he added slowly. "I think we should go. Both of us. It's the chance I need to quantify all this work."

Katara couldn't tell if he really felt that way, or had simply come to the same conclusion as she- that she'd go, whether he accompanied her or not. But she decided to let things lie.

The fire had burned down to embers by the time they finished speaking. It was too dark to prepare anything for cooking, so Katara tore away a piece of seal jerky and Aang ate the last of their flatbread, taking a few bites of a raw tomato-carrot when Katara mentioned it. They went to bed in silence and left at dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're reading this, congratulations! You've made it to the end of the first chapter. I'm not sure where I'm going to take this but I wanted to get the first chapter (that's been floating around in my head for YEARS) out there to see what people thought of it. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you'd like to see in this story in the comments and leave me a kudos if you want to read more!


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